The Current Wisdom: The Lack of Recent Warming and the State of Peer Review

The Current Wisdom is a series of monthly articles in
which Senior Fellow Patrick J. Michaels reviews interesting items
on global warming in the scientific literature that may not have
received the media attention that they deserved, or have been
misinterpreted in the popular press.

The Current Wisdom only comments on science appearing
in the refereed, peer-reviewed literature, or that has been
peer-screened prior to presentation at a scientific congress.

Prior to April, 2011, issues
of this Wisdom, which began in 2010, are available at our blog
Cato@Liberty (www.cato-at-liberty.org/).

Boston University’s Robert Kaufmann and colleagues recently
published a paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences examining the causes of the recent dearth of “global
warming.” They concluded that it’s simply natural variability,
augmented by increasing sulfate emissions from dramatically growing
coal consumption by China.

Of course, it is the latter conclusion that has drawn all the
attention, for it allows the possibility that greenhouse gases are
continuing to impart an as-expected warming influence on the global
climate. And then once China gets its air pollution under control
(and we are talking about true air pollution here, i.e.,
not carbon dioxide), global temperatures will rise
rapidly. Thus the dream of alarming climate change lives.

If China’s sulfate emissions are not having much of an impact of
global temperatures, then, the dearth of warming in recent years
supports the hypothesis — now made by many (unpopular) folks
in the climate business — that the “sensitivity” of
temperature to carbon dioxide has been guessed (we choose our words
carefully here) to be too high by climate modelers. In this
scenario, we wake up from the alarmist nightmare and resume our
normal lives.

There are two reasons why we think it is wrong for Kaufmann
et al. to attribute a reduced rate of global warming to
Chinese sulfates:

1) China’s cooling sulfates do not readily make their way into
the Southern Hemisphere, yet, from 1999-2010, temperatures actually
fell there, while they rose in the Northern Hemisphere. This is
exactly the opposite of what should have happened if sulfates are
exerting a relative cooling primarily in the Northern
Hemisphere

2) Chinese coal consumption increased in 2009 and 2010 (in fact,
2010 had the biggest year-over-year increase recorded) — yet,
the global temperature rose sharply in 2009 and in 2010. Because
Kaufmann’s climate model responds instantaneously to sulfates (as
opposed to a decades-long lag to adjust to carbon dioxide changes)
this is contrary to his hypothesis.

Let’s look at the first one.

The link below shows the march of weather systems around the
globe for several months. Notice that the weather systems passing
through China quickly move into the north Pacific Ocean, and don’t
mix into the Southern Hemisphere. Since sulfates only have an
atmospheric lifetime of about a week or so, they are hard pressed
to cause any cooling impact beyond the areas to the immediate east
of China.

So, if a dramatic increase in Chinese sulfur emissions during
the past decade or so has been responsible for the observed
slowdown in the rate of global temperature increase, then
the Northern Hemisphere should be doing most of the work —
that is, the rate of warming in the Northern Hemisphere should have
slowed by much more than the rate of warming in the Southern
Hemisphere. This situation is easy to check.

Figure 1 shows the Northern and Southern Hemisphere temperature
history from 1980 through 2010 according to the surface temperature
data set compiled and maintained by the Climate Research
Unit at the University of East Anglia. During the period of time
during which Chinese sulfate emissions rose (1998-2010), the
warming in the Southern Hemisphere went negative (i.e. became a
cooling) while the Northern Hemisphere warmed. From Figure 1 it is
obvious that the Southern Hemisphere is driving the global
temperature slowdown, not the Northern — a result completely
contrary to Kaufmann et al.’s Chinese sulfate
hypothesis.

Now let’s turn to our Reason #2. Simply put, during the past 2
years (which were not part of the Kaufmann et al.
dataset), global temperatures rose as did Chinese coal
consumption. According to Kaufmann et al.’s
hypothesis, the increase in Chinese coal consumption should act to
drive down the rate of global temperature rise, but that is not
what happened. Again, temperatures are behaving in an opposite
fashion, compared to what the hypothesis predicts.

The top panel in Figure 2 shows Chinese coal consumption from
the BP Statistical Review of World Energy from 1998 through 2010.
Notice that it increased substantially in both 2009 and 2010
— two years not included in the Kaufmann et al.
analysis. The year-over-year increase from 2009 to 2010 was the
highest annual increase on record. If Chinese coal consumption were
having a large impact on global temperature, we would expect that
global temperatures would remain suppressed in 2009 and 2010. But
the bottom panel in Figure 2 shows what really happened —
global temperatures rose in both 2009 and 2010, contrary to the
Kaufmann et al. hypothesis.

It is clear that natural variability, not sulfate emissions, is
the cause of the lack of recent warming. We arrived at this very
same conclusion several years ago, however, despite repeated
attempts, we were unable to find a journal even interested in
considering our work for publication.

b) in our new papers, we used that same (published) statistical
model, but updated the independent variables (natural variability
and anthropogenic forcing) with recently available data;

c) we used the updated independent variables to “forecast” the
dependent variable, global temperature from 1998-2007 (in our case)
or 1999-2008 (their case)

d) we concluded that our model developed from the pre-1998 data
worked quite well using the post-1998 data — i.e., the global
temperature response since 1998 was just what we would expect it to
be, based on what it was in the couple of decades immediately prior
to 1998;

e) we both arrived at the same take home message:

Kaufmann et al. (2011):

[W]e find that recent global temperature records are
consistent with the existing understanding of the relationship
among global surface temperature, internal variability, and
radiative forcing, which includes anthropogenic factors with well
known warming and cooling effects.

Our paper (2008):

We find that the combined forces of “natural”
variations in ENSO, solar activity and volcanic eruptions have
acted to temporarily offset the continued pressure exerted by
“global warming” [which we defined as “from anthropogenic
activities, or from some other not-yet-fully-understood
processes”]

The only difference between the manuscripts was Kaufmann’s
unsupportable hypothesis that Chinese sulfate emissions also
contributed to the lack of warming.

Our experience with the peer-review process was a nightmare that
eerily resembles what University of Guelph’s Ross McKitrick
describes in his chapter “Bias in the Peer-Review Process,” in my
new book, Climate Coup.

We started with the American Geophysical Union’s (AGU)
publication EOS, Transactions of the American Geophysical
Union. After sitting on the paper for several months (which
included getting a review or two), the EOS editors told us
that we had too much “new” science in our piece and that
EOS was more of a news publication and that they’d be
happy to consider publishing a description of our work after it was
published elsewhere:

Here is a review that they got concerning our submission:

I have carefully read and reread this proposal. Must
say that I am surprised that the 2nd author [Patrick Michaels] is
now stating that global warming is alive and well, and implicitly
supports the view that anthropogenic activities, especially
greenhouse gas accumulation in the atmosphere and ocean is the
cause of current global warming trend. Eos readership
would find the overall argument interesting, especially from the
2nd author.

However, the authors propose to carry out new analysis using a
version of a previously published methodology/model. Hence, in my
view, such analyses should be submitted as a research paper in a
peer reviewed journal and rather than Eos. I admit that I
have not chased the previously published methodology to ascertain
the validity or otherwise of the proposed new
analysis.

And here is their final decision:

I have consulted with several Eos editors, and
one problem with this submission is the presentation of any new
data. As stated earlier Eos is not an appropriate outlet
for publishing new data. However, we would be very much open to
publishing reinterpretation of **published** data or analysis.

Therefore, we stand by our earlier decision that after you publish
the original research in a peer-reviewed journal that you come back
to us with a proposal for writing something for Eos that
would be written for the broad spectrum of disciplines represented
by our readership.

OK, fine. Since the paper describing our original model
(Michaels and Knappenberger, 2000) was published in another AGU
publication, Geophysical Research Letters, we figured we
submit our new paper there, after expanding the piece from the
original EOS submission to a paper more appropriate for
GRL. In our cover letter to GRL, we included our
full set of correspondence with the editors of EOS, and
explained how EOS was potentially interested in our
findings, but considered there to be too much “new” science for it
to be published there. We also included the reviewer’s comments
that Eos had obtained (and reproduced above) including
“Eos readership would find the overall argument
interesting, especially from the 2nd author.”

Here is what we got back from the GRL editor, one day
after submission:

I have evaluated your paper, 2008GL035428, and
determined that it is not the type of high-impact contribution that
warrants rapid publication in a letters journal such as
Geophysical Research Letters. Of course the topic of your
work is of critical importance. However, I believe that your
analyses are too simplistic relative to others published in
GRL. As such I am returning your paper without
review.

Interesting. Too much new science for one AGU publication, too
little for another.

So we turned to a journal which has a section dedicated to short
science pieces with broad interest — we reworked our article
and submitted it as a Brevia piece to Science
magazine.

A week later we got this:

Thank you for submitting your manuscript “Did Global
Warming Stop in 1998?” to Science. Because your manuscript
was not given a high priority rating during the initial screening
process, we will not be able to send it out for in-depth review.
Although your analysis is interesting, we feel that the scope and
focus of your paper make it more appropriate for a more specialized
journal. We are therefore notifying you so that you can seek
publication elsewhere.

Well, we figured Science was a long shot.

At the same time, we had received several emails
soliciting/inviting us to submit a paper to a new journal titled
Advance in Meteorology — a journal that was looking
for content to get it off the ground:

I am writing to invite you to submit an article to the
newly launched Advances in Meteorology, which aims to
provide a rapid forum for the dissemination of original research
articles as well as review articles in all areas of
meteorology.

We figured, we had a paper basically ready to go for them. So,
we redrafted it to fit the submission guideline to Advance in
Meteorology, and sent it off.

About a week later we got this:

Following the review of your Research Article
AMET/746854 titled “Did “Global Warming” Stop in 1998?,” by Patrick
J. Michaels and Paul C. Knappenberger, I regret to inform you that
it was found unsuitable for publication in Advance in
Meteorology.

The major reasons are that this topic is discussed elsewhere (e.g.
IPCC 2007), the statements are too general and simplified, the
methods not appropriate to address the question of detection and
attribution at such short time scales. Further, the analysis does
not include other relevant factors, such as oceanic components,
that have been shown to be of importance to account for continental
to global warming. Also important other features at intra to
interannual time scales are missing. The period is too short for a
good model calibration/verification and to derive statistical sound
results.

The complexity of this kind of analysis, in this case applied to
decadal scale predictions are presented in Keenlyside et
al. (2008, Nature, 453, 84-88). They have also hindcast
experiments using different forcings to explain current
conditions.

Ok, well, at least we got some scientific feedback, all of which
was irrelevant. Our empirical model was built using monthly data
over a time period of 20 years, fit the observed temperatures
pretty well (the explained variance was about 60%) and it had
already been published in Geophysical Research Letters. We
were merely using it to understand the recent lack of warming.

Before giving up completely, we thought that we’d give it on
more go, this time at the journal Climate Research, where
we had published a half dozen or more papers in the past. About a
week after submission, we got this response:

We have looked through the manuscript (ms) ‘Did “global
warming” stop in 1998?’ that you recently submitted for publication
in Climate Research.

While the information reported might be interesting, I regret to
inform you that we cannot consider your ms for publication. We did
not find your scientific arguments very convincing.

Climate Research was the journal that the climategaters
particularly hated. They hatched plans to destroy it every time it
published something they didn’t like, and I am sure these leaked
all over the porous world of climate science. Perhaps their
campaign worked.

We don’t know how to explain the glib acceptance of a very
similar paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of
Sciences (with the exception of the obviously wrong hypothesis
about Chinese sulfates), and our going 0-for-5. But that is the way
it is.